Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Mundania

Still no car keys. Darcie called a locksmith, who said we'd be able to get the key code from the original dealer. But when we finally tracked them down we discovered that they throw that kind of information out after seven years because by then most people have changed the lock on their car, so the information is irrelevant and confusing. What? Who does that? Incidentally, the locksmith around here will change a hundred bucks to remove and borrow the door lock from the car and use it to make a new set of keys. Not bad, when you consider that the 'smith will have to make a house call to get the lock core because, after all, if we could drive it there, we wouldn't need his help in the first place.

As my school-provided laptop has ground to a halt over the past few weeks I've learned an important lesson: if you move offLAN, don't forget that your virus scan auto-update is intranet-based. Mickey the IT tech reports that my laptop set a new record for viruses (over 60) and popups (over 800), and may need to stay in her shop for a few more days. So now I'm carless and computerless, albeit thankful for redundancy within the family in both cases -- conveniently, the IT folks lost their assets manager in the recent budget cuts, and forgot to ask for Darcie's laptop back when the school didn't rehire her last year.

Even my body isn't working right. I hit a record five nosebleeds in one day yesterday; highlights here include sneezing during a class lecture, feeling that unmistakable trickling feeling, and actually asking the class if they minded if I kept teaching. (They didn't, so I did, with a tissue on my nose until it stopped.) Then today I fell asleep on the couch after returning from our dining hall supper, crushing one of my favorite ties, and you know they're never the same after you squish 'em. Woke up for a brief systems check an hour later, and despite oodles of papers to grade and other sundry backwork on the brain, crashed alongside my wife and child, nearing the end of their extended shared bedtime ritual, in our communal bed for an additional hour, waking only when my vivid dream of hospitals somehow led to a chase scene on a glass staircase above a flooded restaurant, and my shoes began to slip.

Lucky I awoke: despite impending snow 'n' ice, I've got a presentation on "Blogs as library resources: implications and reservations" for the library staff tomorrow afternoon. And I must give my Modern American Culture class a quiz on Marxist and Feminist critical theories tomorrow if we're to stay on track, and to give it, I need to write it. I'm thinking a little What are the differences and similarities between hegemony and patriarchy?, maybe some In what way is the act of criticism political? or Why do many Feminists reject the validity of Men's studies? Yeah, and something about the relationship between Marx and Marxism. That'll hold 'em for a while.

Comments:

I also once forgot keys inside the car. It was the drama of the day I needed to call out a locksmith to let me in. They said that locksmith will come in 30-40 minutes. Probably he has a lot of work. Within 15 minutes time, the locksmith arrived. I was really surprised. He was a tall and fair guy. He brought along all his gears from lightweight to heavyweight. And he opened the car in five minutes. After that case I made extra key, because hiring a good locksmith is never cheap. But hiring a dishonest or incompetent one is always expensive.

# posted by

Unknown : 11:14 AM, February 05, 2008